To gain control of the Channel long enough to throw 40,000 troops ashore at Margate, and thereafter to meet and conquer the army of defense--such was the highly difficult objective, to assure the success of which Philip had been led to hope for a wholesale defection of English Catholics to the Spanish cause. Twenty thousand troops were to sail with the Armada; Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, was to add 17,000 veterans from Flanders and assume supreme command. With the Spanish infantry once landed, under the best general in Europe, it was not beyond reason that England might become a province of Spain. What Philip did not see clearly, what indeed could scarcely be foreseen from past experience, was that no movement of troops should be undertaken without first definitely accounting for the enemy fleet. The Spanish had not even an open base to sail to. With English vessels thronging the northern ports of the Channel, with 90 Dutch ships blockading the Scheldt and the shallows of the Flanders coast, it would be necessary to clear the Channel by a naval victory, and maintain control until it was assured by victory on land. The leader first selected, Santa Cruz--a veteran of Lepanto--at least put naval considerations uppermost and laid plans on a grand scale, calling for 150 major ships and 100,000 men, 30,000 of them sailors. But with his death in 1587 the campaign was again thought of primarily from the army standpoint. The ships were conceived as so many transports, whose duty at most was to hold the English fleet at bay. Parma was to be supreme. To succeed Santa Cruz as naval leader, and in order, it is said, that the gray-haired autocrat Philip might still control from his cell in the Escorial, the Duke of Medina Sidonia was chosen--an amiable gentleman of high rank, but consciously ignorant of naval warfare, uncertain of purpose, and despondent almost from the start. Medina had an experienced Vice Admiral in Diego Flores de Valdes, whose professional advice he usually followed, and he had able squadron commanders in Recalde, Pedro de Valdes, Oquendo, and others; but such a commander-in-chief, unless a very genius in self-effacement, was enough to ruin a far more auspicious campaign.